Seven computers hum through the Rhineland night at the University of Mannheim's Laboratory for Dependable Distributed Systems. All they do is collect bad news and nasty infections from the open Internet.
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Why haven't smartphones been overrun by a deluge of viruses the way PCs have? According to researchers at Northeastern University, in Boston, these phones have been safe because no single mobile-phone operating system has achieved a big enough market share for a major virus outbreak to occur. But that could change.
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The technology industry is suffering mightily from the global economic crisis. Worldwide semiconductor revenue is expected to drop 24.1 percent in 2009, to US $194.5 billion, according to Gartner, a technology research firm in Stamford, Conn. Meanwhile, revenue from enterprise software-that is, corporate-scale systems- will be flat at about $222 billion. Still, there are some sectors that will gai...
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One of the most sought after new features on mobile devices is the touch screen. But that name is a misnomer, according to a group of researchers at Northwestern University, in Evanston, Ill., who point out the obvious-that these displays offer minimal tactile feedback. But suppose touch screens could touch you back: You could "feel," say, the edges of the buttons on a virtual keypad or the links ...
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In the 2000 movie Memento, the main character tries to solve the mystery of his wife's murder, despite suffering from amnesia that causes his brain to effectively "reboot" every 5 minutes. In the world of computing, "passive" radio-frequency identification (RFID) chips have a similar problem. Dependent for power on infrequent, scavenged RF energy from a reading device, RFID chips may reboot more t...
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The U.S. military has been chasing ultraviolet (UV) communication for decades. Now researchers say radios that communicate using UV light are finally within reach. Working with the Army Research Lab (ARL) in Adelphi, Md., these researchers are mapping out the steps needed to commercialize UV radios. They've reached the last piece of the puzzle: untangling the poorly understood, extraordinarily com...
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A good high-definition LCD projector can still set you back US $2000, but if your wiring and woodworking skills are up to speed, you can put one together for around $600. It's not like you have to build it from scratch. At least two companies, DIY for Life and DIY Projector Kits, sell kits and supplies that make this something any engineer could do in a weekend.
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Time waits for no engineer

You might expect a garage-born maker of a niche gadget to lose its fans, crash, and burn when it gets taken over by a large corporation. It didn't happen that way, though, to Slim Devices, the tiny company based in Mountain View, Calif., that created the Squeezebox, one of the first and best-reviewed digital-to-analog audio streamers.
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Netflix is offering US $1 million for an algorithm that's 10 percent more accurate than the one Netflix uses to predict customers' movie preferences. The AT&T Labs team account is presented.
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microchip design, as in life, small things sometimes add up to big things. Dream up a clever microcircuit, get it sculpted in a sliver of silicon, and your little creation may unleash a technological revolution. It happened with the Intel 8088 microprocessor. And the Mostek MK4096 4-kilobit DRAM. And the Texas Instruments TMS32010 digital signal processor.
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Almost invariably, a new baby's photo album begins with a grainy black-and-white picture taken months before birth - a prenatal ultrasound image, which is often detailed enough to inspire comments about the child's resemblance to various members of the family. But jokes about balding uncles notwithstanding, such scans serve a serious purpose and can prove immensely important, as when they allow do...
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